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Geovany Soto entered the 2008 season as a player with a ton of upside potential, having made his presence felt in a 2007 cup of coffee (.389, 3 HR in 54 AB).  Having lived up to his potential, owners entered 2009 thinking that he was easily a top five catcher in all formats, taking him early in drafts to ensure they got production out of a position that generally doesn’t offer much.

Unfortunately, saying that he fell flat would be an understatement.  His season was a disaster, with inability and injury holding him to a line of:

As much as I love baseball and miss the game this time of year, I get by fine this time of year thanks to hot stove mania. I'm always all over the web, checking out rumors, getting a grasp of what's going on.

I'm big on predictions too, seeing where everyone thinks free agents will end up. So I'll make some predictions of my own. Yes, I do realize that if I make 50 predictions, I'll be lucky if ten of them are correct.

Also, before you make any criticisms, keep in mind how difficult this is. Piecing this together, figuring out which players are compatible with which teams is no easy task.

As any Mets fan can tell you, the Amazins have several holes that need to be filled before taking the field in 2010.  A couple more starting pitchers, a first baseman, left fielder, catcher, setup man...phew.

Looking at the free agent market, most of these holes can be easily filled through signing the available players.  There's starting pitchers available such as John Lackey, Joel Pineiro, and Jason Marquis, left fielders such as Jason Bay and Matt Holliday, and catchers such as Bengie Molina and Yorvit Torrealba. 

What place will the Baltimore Orioles fall in 2010?  More than 80 wins could be a start. 

Of course there is room for optimism.  Every fan has that in the offseason.  Hoping there club can make the right moves to drive his or her home team to the playoffs.

The reality of the situation is that the Orioles haven’t had a winning record since the late '90s.  This discourages top tier free agents from coming to Baltimore. 

This Article Originally Appeared on Friar Forecast

Joe Mauer won his first career American League MVP in an almost unanimous decision today. 

Albert Pujols—barring some sort of disgusting error by the BBWAA—will win his second consecutive National League MVP trophy early tomorrow afternoon. 

Both players are phenomenal talents that played at the highest level throughout the season and were clearly the most valuable player in their respective league. 

Just take a look at the raw numbers for each player:

Pujols: .327/47/135/1.101 OPS

Mauer: .365/28/96/1.014 OPS

The American League Most Valuable Player Award was announced today. As expected, Minnesota Twin backstop Joe Mauer ran away with the honor.

Voting for Mauer was nearly unanimous, as he received 27 of the 28 first place votes. Though he came in fourth, Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers received the only other first place vote. Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees came in second and third in the voting, respectively.

The free agency period is now upon us, so we have been hearing lots of talk about Type-A and Type-B free agents and draft pick compensation…and the discussion leaves some people wondering what is all means.

For those of you who think you need an abacus to figure it all out, let’s see if I can help simplify it a little bit for you.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say the Red Sox sign John Lackey…and let’s say they lose Jason Bay to the Mariners and sign Jermaine Dye to fill the void left when Bay leaves. The question begs: which teams would get what compensation, and why?

A catcher has won the 2009 American League Most Valuable Player Award. It was not Yankees catcher, Jorge Posada, but Minnesota's Joe Mauer. Jorge Posada possibly was not even in consideration for the award. But the Yankees veteran has just won his fifth World Series title. Does Jorge Posada have the numbers to be enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame.